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All Rise...

Appellate Judge James A. Stewart feels his sharp wit in this small claim will create the Great American "review boom."

The Charge

"I don't want to see lust and rape and incest and sodomy. I can get all
that at home."—Dudley Moore, as the censor, Lord Chamberlain

The Case

A good chunk of the original Beyond the Fringe revue didn't get past
the censor (only 23 of 35 sketches were acceptable) when the show opened in
London's West End in 1961, but the comedy show, which began as a late-night
diversion at Edinburgh's Fringe Festival and eventually did stints in London and
New York, had an influence that went beyond the stage audience. It tested the
censor's power, made a comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (Bedazzled, The Hound of the Baskervilles),
and started the 1960s British "satire boom" that led to That Was
the Week that Was (which, if you take the time to look it up, sounds
suspiciously like The Daily Show) and Monty Python's Flying
Circus.

The four Fringe dwellers—Cook, Moore, Alan Bennett, and
Jonathan Miller—taped their performance at a 1964 Gala Farewell for
television. That performance promptly disappeared for years, popping up only now
for this DVD release. The buttoned-down quartet walks out in jackets and ties
onto a split-level structure with trapdoors and lots of hidden doors that serves
as a multitude of settings, Shakespearean style (even for a Shakespeare parody,
"So That's the Way You Like It"). With only a few props and goofy
hats, they take on the world. Note that there's also a piano on the set for
Moore's musical mischief, highlighted by a dramatic song based on "Little
Miss Muffet." Even if you'd gone into this one without knowing any of the
players or their futures, you'd notice that Cook and Moore outshine their comic
colleagues, moving into the spotlight just a little bit more. Overall,
Fringe reminds you of a topical version of the then-current Bob Newhart
comedy albums, with the quartet delivering its absurd lines punctuated with the
pauses and repetitions of nervous, natural speech.

Some of the material will seem familiar: the "One Leg Too Few"
routine, in which Moore plays a one-legged actor auditioning for the role of
Tarzan, which, as Cook points out, "is traditionally associated with a
two-legged man," is an oft-redone Cook-Moore standard. Other sketches, such
as the numerous mock interview and panel segments, will be recognized for their
style. At times, it has the oddly familiar feel of an oft-copied original, and
seems tired when it would have seemed fresh and unique to its original audience,
but it still hits home at others.

Take, for example, a sketch on civil defense, in which Moore, from the
audience, asks a panel, "Following the nuclear holocaust, could you tell me
when normal public services would be restored?" After seeing terrorist
attacks and the response to Hurricane Katrina, the question has an eerie
resonance. The sketch—"Civil War"—ends with a slapstick
visual: Cook donning a giant paper bag as protection against nuclear fallout.
One can also hear the anti-war sentiment expressed in "Aftermyth of
War" ("You know how in a game of football, 10 men often play better
than 11? Perkins, we're asking you to be that one man. I want you to lay down
your life. We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone
of the war.") in current jokes about Iraq. The quartet also braved the
censors for gags about homosexuality ("Bollard"), religion ("Man
Bites God"), and class warfare ("Real Class"). And, perhaps most
brazenly, the joke about the censors which opened this small claim.

The bit with the sharpest wordplay is "The Great Train Robbery,"
which has Cook, as the deputy head of New Scotland Yard, being grilled by
Bennett about the lack of progress in the investigation, with lines such as
"When you speak of a train robbery, this, in fact, involved no loss of
train. It was merely the contents of the train that were pilfered," and
"We believe this to be the work of thieves." Since the audience
applause and laughter are heard throughout, and shown after most pieces, it's
clear this one was a favorite in 1964 as well. The sense of playfulness with
language and ideas holds up, even if the topical material is no longer timely
and the style is now familiar.

As you'd imagine, the black-and-white taped presentation is faded in places,
with washed-out images some places and actors lost in shadow elsewhere, and
there's a fuzzy indistinctness about the audience footage. I turned on the
closed-captioning to catch a few lines here and there as well. Still, for a lost
1960s performance, it's a decent enough presentation. The extras are helpful in
explaining the significance of the show, and catching us up on the fate of the
two remaining Fringe members, Bennett and Miller, who've left acting but
made their marks as writers. Note that the Broadway Playbill is on a DVD-ROM,
which didn't play on my computer and might not work on yours. How about a more
accessible CD-ROM next time?

After more than 40 years of satire and sharp British silliness, you might
find Beyond the Fringe dated, but if you've laughed in the 40 or so years
since, you should enjoy seeing these pioneers of modern comedy in action. Guilty
of inciting a revolution, but not guilty of lame comedy (except literally, in
"One Leg Too Few").